The Black Death (a Global History)

By (author) Asbridge Thomas
Description:

Thomas Asbridge’s remarkable new book reveals the global impact of humanity’s greatest natural disaster, and the terrible human cost of this calamity.

''An up-to-the-hour work of scholarship that is at the same time a page turner... Asbridge''s definitive biography of yersina pestis, the germ that caused the world’s deadliest disease, is a masterpiece'' Thomas W. Laqueur

In the mid-fourteenth century, a lethal plague struck the medieval world, causing unimaginable suffering and destruction. This terrifying pandemic – the Black Death – was unquestionably one of history’s defining episodes, yet a critical feature of its progress has often been ignored: the disease was not confined to Europe, but rather affected almost all of the known world, including the Near and Middle East, Byzantium, north Africa and Asia.

Tracing the pandemic’s course across the medieval globe, The Black Death contrasts the experiences of different peoples, including Christians, Muslims and Jews, charting this catastrophe’s transformative effects on diverse aspects of medieval life. And crucially, Asbridge demonstrates that the plague was often at its most destructive in the Islamic world, where it ultimately played a role in the collapse of the mighty Mamluk Empire.

The Black Death also brings the human drama of this calamitous era to life, evoking the terror and the turmoil that beset cities such as London, Cairo and Florence. Asbridge reconstructs the lives of the men, women and children who faced the Black Death – from ruling monarchs to peasant farmers – laying bare both the abject horror they endured and the courageous resolve they often demonstrated while striving to survive.

Uncovering a story that speaks to our own age, The Black Death highlights humankind’s capacity for compassion and resilience amidst a global crisis to explain how the medieval world confronted, and ultimately overcame, this shattering pandemic.

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Learned but horribly compelling… Asbridge skilfully combines a global narrative of the plague with examples of horrendous personal tragedy to build a powerful portrait of a world that stared death in the face
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A magisterial history of one of the worst ever pandemics [which] focuses on the individuals caught up in the chaos
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A gripping and authoritative global history… Asbridge handles the science of the plague as confidently as its history… The Black Death’s impeccable, wide-ranging scholarship and its suitability for a general audience make it an impressive achievement
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An up-to-the-hour work of scholarship that is at the same time a page turner: intimate stories of suffering, death and resilience are situated in large scale social, cultural and economic histories of the ravages of the Black Death as it spread across the globe. Asbridge''s definitive biography of Yersina pestis, the germ that caused the world’s deadliest disease, is a masterpiece
Review quote:
Compelling, horrifying, humane. This is the history we need now of this cataclysmic pandemic: wide-ranging, personal and hugely accessible. From Kilkenny to Cairo, Moscow to Mecca, Asbridge allows us to see the Black Death through the eyes and in the words of the people all around the world who experienced its terrors, sought to make sense of it, and lived with all its seismic and durable consequences . . . A must-read for anyone who wants to get under the skin and into the mindset of the Middle Ages, or who needs to know how humans react when faced with apocalypse
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Tom Asbridge does for the Black Death what John Keegan did for battle: evoking the feeling of being there, recapturing the experience of the sufferers and survivors. Admiring t